Winter Sailing

The winter sailing season
tends to be a quiet one in colder climates. As long as water is still water
(not ice), I don't see many reasons to consider interrupting the sailing
season. Sailing in the winter is different, you need to take extra care,
and do some things differently.

Shovelling the deck
before sailing, for instance.

Warm clothes are really
important, winter is no reason to be cold.

You always need to consider
hypothermia, and how to continually avoid it.

Besides knowing how
to dress (ie, why you put on a hat if your feet are cold), and what to
wear (several layers, and flotation), a good supply of hot drinks in vacuum
bottles really helps.

Great food, of course,
also helps.

Belaying pins work reasonably well in cold weather, as long as you don't add a locking hitch on the last turn (which will freeze).

Jam cleats don't work well. Regular cleats work reasonably well in cold weather, the bigger they are the better, with respect to the size of the lines made down to them.

Hatches that slide don't work well if the exposed slides get snow/ice on them. I think a cover over the exposed portion of the slides would help (haven't had the chance to try this yet). Hatches that lift instead of slide work well in cold weather...nothing to get frozen shut.

New
Year's Day Sail, 2006, New York Harbor

A great way to start
the New Year right is to go sailing. Weather on Jan 1, 2006 in New York
harbor was very pleasant, the snow had melted, the temperature was reasonable
(5°C / 40°F), the wind was very light. Too light for good sailing,
but the less wind, the easier it is to stay warm.

A windshift shortly before leaving ended my hopes of sailing off the
dock, so we got aboard, motored off, headed upriver a bit, and set all
the sails (main, foresail, jib, fisherman, topsail).

There were only two
other sailboats out in the harbor, as we toasted the New Year.

The temperature varied
somewhat throughout the sail. As the sun went low, and the (apparant) wind
picked up late in the day, some people bundled up.

Krysia, however, outdid
us all by going for a New Years Day swim!

New
Year's Day Sail, 2007, New York Harbor

Sailing on New Years
Day 2007 looked really doubtful for quite a while. There was a cold front
coming through New Years Day with a lot of uncertainty about exactly when,
and how much wind and rain were involved.

Temperatures were warm
enough that there would not be any snow, but moderate to high winds are
best avoided in winter, unless everyone aboard has really warm, windproof
clothes (very few people do).

I delayed the sail
an hour until most of the heavy rain had finished, and give people more
time to recover from New Years Eve. The wind was not suitable for sailing
off the dock, so we motored out, into the fog to set sail.

After a while the fog
lifted. The wind kept shifting from very light to moderate to calm and
back.

While last year there
seemed to be two other sailboats (not schooners) out on New Year's Day,
this year, we seemed to be the only sailboat.